I thought stream updated policies so that this time of foreign review bombing wouldn’t be as apparent? (Reviews in your specific region counting)
Edit: they did. Still is very positive for everyone else
If they have a legitimate complaint (bad translation), it’s not review bombing
Though it’s not really relevant to anyone not speaking that language, even if it’s not review bombing.
I actually don’t know if it’s Steam or Enhanced Steam but there’s a way to filter reviews by language. It’s really neat to see something like overwhelmingly positive in one country, and mixed/negative in another country.
Oh that’s was a default steam change (for the better)
Got tired of seeing random Chinese bullshit review bombing because a non-foreign specific game didn’t give enough glory to the CCP and china to appease nationalists
Things feeling overly flowery. Wuxia-style or even nonsensical, clearly show that tone matters as much as accuracy in localization. Let’s hope the upcoming fixes restore the game’s intended mood and readability for all players.
One of the characters says „and btw Taiwan is a sovereign nation“
Not a bug/won’t fix
Literally a bug
Bug report: not enough bugs in the city of bugs.
Based
Please tell me this is true
i would be mad too if my videogame had western oligarch talking points yeah.
Devotion is a great game!
don’t speak a language
have no idea yourself how the end product will turn out
every person you hire has to be trusted with a grain of salt and you have to take them at their word
Nightmare, but now that the game is out, it isn’t like the content is under Fort Knox anymore and they can peer review it with the community until its right.
I think translations should involve a pair of people where both know both languages but one is fluent in the one while the other is fluent in the other. Or a single person fluent in both, but if you don’t know the other language, it can be hard to verify that fluency and I’m sure it’s not very hard to find people willing to lie about their proficiency to get a job.
it’s not like the cartridge age and they’re burying them in the new mexico desert or something
The main complaint seems to be that it is translated like a wuxia novel, which is incorrectly stated to be against the tone of the game.
Wuxia describes very near exactly the tone of Hollow Knight games: a lone, chivalrous but low-born warrior wandering the land fighting their way through a mythical world of bad guys, following legends and righting wrongs while journeying toward the ultimate prize/destination.
Coupled with zero examples of “bad translations”, I’d take this article with a shaker of salt.
From the Kotaku article linked by PCGamer:
According to localization expert Loek van Kooten, one of the main issues is that Silksong‘s evocative but concise writing has been turned into “a high-school drama club’s Elizabethan improv night” in the Chinese versions. He cites the following as an example of how the prose reads:
With nary a spirit nor thought shalt thou persist, bereft of mortal will, unbent, unswayed. With no lament nor tearful cry, only sorrow’s dirge to herald thine eternal woe. Born of gods and of the fathomless abyss, grasping heaven’s firmament in thine unworthy palm. Shackled to endless dream, tormented by pestilence and shadow, thy heart besieged by phantasmal demons. Thou art the chalice of destiny. Verily, thou art the Primordial Knight of Hollowness.
Van Kooten goes on to point out that one of two of Silksong‘s Chinese translators, listed as Hertzz Liu in the credits, had a habit of gloating about their involvement in the game and leaking small details about the development process over the summer prior to its release this week.
I took a quick look at the English dialogue and it reads nothing like the example above. If the Chinese translation is really like that, then the tone is indeed quite different.
Kotaku also quotes the following from a Steam review:
First, the god-awful Chinese translation that everyone is mocking. It’s not just pretentious, pseudo-artistic nonsense—the phrasing and even the localization of place names are an absolute mess. I don’t understand how Hollow Knight’s fantastic, quotable translation turned into this unsalvageable heap of garbage in Silksong. The utterly idiotic localization has even affected the game’s world-building and storytelling, forcing me to guess at character relationships and main plot points. Thankfully, the combat holds up, or else I’d be completely disgusted.
While I can’t verify it myself, considering the state of JP→EN translation I don’t find any of this unbelievable. The complaints line up in what I see in English releases of Japanese games: Misplaced anachronistic language, altered world building, characters and major plot points changed sometimes dramatically (or even cut completely), not to mention unprofessional conduct by the translation team.
That is very close to the English text of both the original Hollow Knight and Silksong.
Opening game description:
"They see your beauty, so frail and fine,
They see your peace, woven of faith and toil,
They forget your heart, bound in slumber and servitude,
When you wake they shall see your truth"
Dialogue
“May you ease your shell within, that your strength renewed can carry you higher.”
“this is the final bell, it shall be rang the last time ever.”
“Scoundrel! Fiend! Who dares wake brave Garmond from his well needed kip?”
“Hold there sister! A great beast stalks this land, swooping and screeching like an ill mannered tyrant!”
The HK games deliberately exist and speak in dramatic and archaic language in a world with knights, citadels, legends and lords.
That is very close to the English text of both the original Hollow Knight and Silksong.
I disagree. If the original is a 3 or 4 on the dramatic and archaic language scale then the translation is a 8+ which definitely changes the tone. Compare the lines you posted with the retranslated quote.
Let me give you the example from my previous comment in its original context:
Global reviews praised Silksong into the stratosphere, with a glowing 92% positivity. In China, however, the numbers plummeted almost immediately to 76% 52%. And the reason could not be hidden: it was the localization. Complaints date back to the August demo, when awkward word choices like 苔穴 (‘moss-hole’) raised eyebrows. Despite repeated feedback, the translation team brushed off criticism—changing their social media bios to ‘don’t comment if you don’t understand.’ That defiance only inflamed players further. What players found on screen was not the brisk, lyrical, elegant style that had carried the first Hollow Knight to such acclaim, but a swamp of overwrought archaisms, a self-indulgent carnival of tangled phrasing that felt less like modern Chinese and more like a Qing-dynasty soap opera written by someone pretending to be Shakespeare.
To illustrate the calamity, one need only place the original Hollow Knight’s translation beside Silksong’s.
The original:
No mind to think. No will to break. No voice to cry out in suffering. Born of God and Void. You are the Vessel. You are the Hollow Knight.
Concise. Clean. Haunting.
Now behold the Silksong version, which players were forced to endure — rendered here in English as the grotesque monstrosity it resembled:
With nary a spirit nor thought shalt thou persist, bereft of mortal will, unbent, unswayed. With no lament nor tearful cry, only sorrow’s dirge to herald thine eternal woe. Born of gods and of the fathomless abyss, grasping heaven’s firmament in thine unworthy palm. Shackled to endless dream, tormented by pestilence and shadow, thy heart besieged by phantasmal demons. Thou art the chalice of destiny. Verily, thou art the Primordial Knight of Hollowness.
One can imagine the reaction. Players did not feel immersed in Pharloom; they felt trapped in a high-school drama club’s Elizabethan improv night. Instead of fighting for survival, they were decoding riddles with the cadence of a failed King James Bible. It is impossible to perform platforming precision when the screen itself sounds like a plague sermon.
And another example, also with English retranslation: Image
Edit: I should note just in case, that the image above is a parody: this is what some Chinese players feel the new team would have localized the lines above from the first game.
I don’t see how that delivers the “equivalent experience” that a faithful localization is meant to provide to the target language reader.
There are several things to keep in mind:
The official Chinese itself makes literary sense, and is within the dramatic, haunting medieval atmosphere of the games.
From what I can read(I lived in China for 7 years and have translated Chinese wuxia comics), the Silksong quotes you shared have been search-engine retranslated to English to be unnecessarily and deliberately obscure.
The first Silksong line can easily be retranslated differently; a literal Google translation of a translation will obviously yield unsatisfying translations. Do you know the original English quotes translated into Chinese?
The Silksong translators have apparently chosen to use words like “without” rather than “no” for dramatic effect. You can translate the character for “without” as no, but the irate fans have not.
The Silksong translators have chosen to be more dramatic and poetic this time around.
It’s completely fair that people don’t like them, but the official Chinese translations themselves are not as complicated as they are being presented and fit within the poetry and medieval drama of HK.
What’s the difference between the “Hollow Knight” and “Silksong” versions mentioned above? Clearly the Silksong Chinese text is longer. Also the retranslated English text is missing the core points from the original English text.
I’m not sure what that screenshot is supposed to be directly comparing, you’ll have to ask that commenter.
The difference in the Chinese characters and words themselves is that the Silksong words are more complex, like using “无”(without) rather than the simple negative “no”, even “台”(platform) has a dozen different meanings depending on the context. The HK characters more concretely refer to single or limited actions and objects, while the Silksong characters are more complex and dynamically significant, depending on a lot of context to discern any specificity.
If all of Silksong is translated like that, it indicates the Chinese translators have focused on translating the overall shadowy, legendary, poetic atmosphere of the game throughout the descriptions and dialogue linguistically, which is contrary to the brief, down-to-earth descriptions and dialogue of much of the English source text. It seems like an artistic choice by the translators, but apparently not one that is resonating with some of the Chinese-speaking audience.
the so called “artistic choice” by the translators clearly diverges from the original writer’s artistic choices in a way that audiences perceive it as negative
It’s great to hear from a trusted authority that the translation is perfect. I’m sure the Chinese will be happy to hear that their concerns are baseless
They’re already overjoyed, what’s one more piece of good news?
I mean, it’s not 1:1, but for some of the lines I think I like the Chinese version better. Sometimes the lines in hollow knight/silksong feel empty so adding a bit “more” isn’t too bad.
adding a bit “more” isn’t too bad.
That’s not the job of a bloody translator.
I mean yes and no. The translator is supposed to make sure the text conveys the same meaning/intent. That doesn’t mean things are 1:1.
With cryptic and poetic text as seen in these games you certainly can’t just Google translate it.
the lines in hollow knight/silksong feel empty so adding a bit “more” isn’t too bad.
translator is supposed to make sure the text conveys the same meaning/intent
Those are not the same thing.
Wait did they include the mewtwo quote from the first Pokémon movie in hollow knight??
Thank you, I thought that one sounded familiar! Let me take it out until I can confirm.
I can confirm Garmond’s exclamations.
I’ve never played either game but I’ll be honest: that English text looks really pretentious to me. I can imagine how bad things could get if that were carried over into the Chinese translation.
Everyday Chinese speech is very plain, blunt, and utilitarian. The Great Classical Chinese novels are anything but. They are as important (arguably even more so) to Chinese as Shakespeare is to English. Speaking in that style should come off just as pretentious in Chinese as a video game character speaking Shakespearean style would in English. Generally, in English fiction (especially TV shows), characters are brutally mocked for speaking in that style unless they are literally reading, rehearsing, or performing Shakespeare.
The search-engine retranslated English from Chinese from English is very obscure.
Some Chinese is blunt, some is poetic.
Some English is blunt, some is poetic.
Original Silksong:
“They see your peace, driven of faith and toil.”
Nobody has to like poetry, but HK game language is steeped in archaic poetry, grandeur and metaphor.
It’s not about liking/not liking poetry, it’s about credibility and verisimilitude. When a character says something, is it credible for the character to have said that? A guy walking around in the Harry Potter wizarding world speaking Shakespearean English is not credible, he’s a laughingstock.
I don’t know much about Hollow Knight but from what I can see it is not set in a fantasy Classical Chinese setting. Having characters in the game speak in the Classical Chinese style is not credible. It does not fit the setting, regardless of the broader similarities between Hollow Knight’s setting and Wuxia novels. It’s culturally tone deaf.
HK games are not set in China, but they are both firmly set in a medieval fantasy world, with knights, legends, superpowers and archaic language.
There is not much to ridicule about the literary poetry of Hollow Knight or Silksong; the mystery and grand imagery in their official description and dialogue is central to their overall historical fantasy worldbuilding.
Regarding Harry Potter, a very different modern urban fantasy setting, a Silksong phrase like “They forget your heart, bound in slumber and servitude” would be out of place(could be a Goblet of Fire clue). That phrase, however, fits squarely and properly into the medieval fantasy setting of Hollow Knight and Silksong. Both HK games are set among the ruins of a legendary, vaunted kingdom, where chivalry and remnants of castle courtesy live on.
The dramatic, archaic poetry present in HK and Silksong is a natural aspect of the game’s dramatic, archaic setting.
I am curious about the Chinese translations directly compared to the original English and how the official HK English compares to the official Silksong English.
HK games are not set in China, but they are both firmly set in a medieval fantasy world
??!
I guess we have completely different ideas of the word medieval. This to me looks like a completely separate, unique fantasy world with no resemblance whatsoever to a historical medieval setting of the sort that games like D&D are based on.
It’s fine if they have created this wonderful unique setting of their own, but then it leaves me with the question of how the language aspects of medieval society ended up there despite all the other differences. I mean these characters don’t even resemble humans!
They speak in a classical style in the games, you have not played them. Theres no need for several paragraphs on this subject from someone that has not played the games. There are plenty of chinese speakers that have, give them a chance to speak.
I have played plenty of other games where characters speak in a classical style. Unless it’s being done to mark the characters as old fashioned (or the world is literally set in medieval times) then it comes off as extremely pretentious.
Edit: I know Hollow Knight is sacred in the indie game community. I’m just saying this is something that annoys many people (including me) who prefer verisimilitude and authenticity.
I guess gone are the days when we laughed at bad localization and enjoyed the game anyway.
Somebody set up us the review bomb.
All your reviews are belong to us. You have no chance to positive. Make your time.
When were those days again?
I whined about the FF7 localization for years. Eventually met one of the guys in charge for separate reasons and whined at him about it. We were both quite old by then.
Some local games media in the late 90s and early 2000s here had a policy that no localization or bad localization would knock 1 to 2 points off the review score automatically, regardless of how good or bad the rest of the game was.
I was mainly thinking of the NES days. “I feel asleep!” “I am Error.” “Someone set up us the bomb.” “A winner is you!”
all your base are belongs to us
I get feeling let down about the localization, but to review bomb over it does feel particularly fragile, even for gamers.
Did we?
So this itsy tiny company, called CD Project. You know what they started as? Locolisation for the Polish market because there was no standards. That’s their claim to fame before ever starting on a game themselves.
Your comment has to be an anecdotal. Because games lived and died by localisations. Game like Gothic is legendary in Europe but the English version was quite lack luster and even though the games were vastly superior to elder scrolls, they couldn’t penetrate.
Someone set us up the bomb.
Yeah. We laughed real hard at shitty localizations and ad even loved the games still.
Somebody set up us the bomb.
Zero Wing is quite a hard game to love, tho. That phenomenal opening is followed up by a very mid Gradius knock-off. I’d probably have chosen Symphony Of The Night as the best game with an awful translation - voice acted by native speakers, too.
Probably excusable when neither one of the devs speak the language. They probably trusted whoever did the translation and that’s that. Seems like an easy fix though.
I am just curious how bad it could be that you would write a negative review about it. I’ve seen some pretty bad translations in my language, but it never made the game unplayable. I guess difficult to convey when you are not a Chinese speaker, the article examples don’t mean much to me.
It’s insane, here’s the translation back to English:
With nary a spirit nor thought shalt thou persist, bereft of mortal will, unbent, unswayed. With no lament nor tearful cry, only sorrow’s dirge to herald thine eternal woe. Born of gods and of the fathomless abyss, grasping heaven’s firmament in thine unworthy palm. Shackled to endless dream, tormented by pestilence and shadow, thy heart besieged by phantasmal demons. Thou art the chalice of destiny. Verily, thou art the Primordial Knight of Hollowness.
From what I’ve heard, Chinese gamers are significantly more likely to leave a negative review if there are issues. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I think it’s good for consumers to demand the products they buy to be as good as possible, but it also just makes developers want to avoid them, or do things like Steam has and separate reviews by language by default.
We got jabronis who leave bad reviews because games are woke.
FF14 has some of the worst English writing I have ever had the displeasure of suffering through. I started and quit that game like four-six times over the years before finally forcing through to play with friends. I had to look up portions of the original Japanese and translate it myself to get any enjoyment out of the story. I’m not sure about some of the later expansions because it eventually got enjoyable enough that I stopped looking things up, but the latest expansion had me going to the Japanese again, and I cannot understand why they keep deviating from the script in ways that make it worse.
I also quit reading the Witcher series part-way through book four because I just can’t take David French’s writing. The fan translations are much better.
I can only think of one book which was originally in English and translated to Swedish that I found readable. Literally every originally-in-Swedish book I pick up is delightful. Are the people doing the translations just people who failed to write on their own or something?
The headline is either confusing or a touch clickbaity. It’s mixed for Chinese language reviews specifically. The overall (and the English reviews, too) are at Very Positive.
But hey, fair, they messed up with the localization and apparently some bits of the launch. It’s gonna get you on the user reviews.
This is one reason I’ve effectively stopped caring about steam review bombs. People review bomb over the stupidest shit and never change their review if the tiny issue is fixed
A game having a bad translation in your language is a valid concern, and not “stupid shit”.
The dislike for the translation appears to be more a bunch of idiot not liking wuxia style speech.
This would be like English speakers review bombing silksong over it’s Shakespearean style of speech.
The translation is fine and accurate to the source.
Calling it a bad translation is just objectively not true. At worse you could make an argument that it’s too accurate and over steps instead of taking into consideration the gap between wuxia and modern Chinese versus Shakespearean and modern English
Translations are a delicate issue. It is not enough to translate the original words to their most accurate counterparts, you have to convey the intention behind the words. Are you a native chinese speaker?
From people who have no translation in their own language, yes it is.
Big countries really sound entitled when you’ve lived a life of your language not even being considered, I understand where they come from but I can’t help but feel a little aggravated
Poor translation seems like a pretty fair reason to me tbh, steam now groups reviews by language too
Buying a game because it claims it is available in your language and then getting served an awful, nonsensical translation is absolutely not a stupid reason to leave a bad review.
This will be fixed in a week or two, but 80% of the reviews will not change. That’s just what review bombers do. Many buy the game to jump on the band wagon and refund the game. Review still counts.
Yeah, that’s a consequence of putting out a flawed product. Who cares?
In this one case, it kinda sucks for the devs since they presumably had no way of knowing they were releasing a flawed product. It was probably the translator that fucked them over.
Don’t sell to markets you don’t understand. I don’t feel sorry for them, even as a big Hollow Knight fan.
I don’t even understand how that logic is supposed to work. Fuck every localisation attempt, then? 99% of games will be English only?
Didn’t steam just change the reviews to be aggregated per language? So Chinese or Russian review bombs won’t effect the rating that you see any longer.
there’s a setting for that now, i think the default is yes.
That only impacts the reviews if you want to actually read them the total reviews are not filtered.
I’ve stopped caring about steam reviews completely. Too often I have bought a game that was reviewed as overwhelmingly positive and it turned out to be some boring ass niche game. At least I got them refunded.
Too often I have bought a game that was reviewed as overwhelmingly positive and it turned out to be some boring ass niche game.
Ironically, this is how I feel about Hollow Knight lol
Yep, this is caused because people flood in from their little discord server where everyone has crawled up the dev’s ass. Once you learn to recognize this you’ll never be able to unsee it.
This makes sense. I never went with the whole discord thing, so I didn’t think of that possibility.
I have no idea why one would ever use that platform as a forum of sorts. To me it was always a bloated alternative to ventrilo or TeamSpeak.
For me, it’s massive shitpost in reviews which I just want to know if the game is good. The worst thing is their often so unfunny and wish there’s a way to filter out those reviews (which is using it loosely)
Why can’t they speak freedom language? 🇺🇲🍔💣🇺🇲 we’re here to fuck up democracy and act like the center of the world, and we’re out of democracy 🇺🇲
Would be fun if Lemmy had a feature to block people / instances by country, now that I think of it
I mean even in english the text is cryptic af. Maybe they’re upset it’s intentionally hard to understand
You know how bad things are when I searched for some examples and the first result is a localization mod.
Did they use ai or something?
A good translation of a game with only like 50 pages of text. They could bust out a passable translation within a week. How long would a great one take? Like two, three weeks to write?
As a translator, I wanna say that translation isn’t a simple conversion of words when it comes to story. It takes longer than that to translate a good story of 50 pages because you have to make sure you understand the story and even the unwritten parts of it to convey the right nuance and tone.
My father used to translate books and managed about a page per hour with an editor to offer notes. I stand by 2-3 weeks to manually translate 50 pages of dialogue and exposition to a great, shippable quality. It’s more difficult when the subject matter is this disjointed, but I don’t imagine it would slow someone down by more than 4x. Particularly if there are notes on tone and premise available.
Maybe you were just talking about the story and perhaps you’re right. A whole team might be able to handle it with perfect editor’s notes and zero questions, zero changes.
But I would like to also add that Hollow Knight’s story is very cryptic and the lines by all the characters are very disjointed. It’s also a fantasy so there are a lot of made up names, terminologies, ideas, and play on words that simply may not exist in the target language.
I don’t know what genre or language pairs your father used to translate, but English to Chinese, I imagine, is quite difficult.
I read an article about the Japanese localization of the game and the translator did a lot of back and forth with the devs (not just an editor), to discuss the world and tone. It wasn’t just a matter of “we want it this way by this day,” and boom, it’s done.
Furthermore, you have to consider all the extra UI stuff they have to translate when it comes to video games.
So, while I respect your opinion, I too stand by mine that 2 - 3 weeks seems too short especially if we include the UI stuff as well as review/QA.
It could be that your father was just better than me at translating lol.
Edit: I’m also wondering if the PPC needs to review the content (not the quality) before it is approved for sale in China.
Well, you do need to hire someone, get them set up with access to the text database and then you need to implement the updated lines in-game and test and then bug fix anything that breaks anything, presumably. And then make the patch, submit it and have it go live, although for China presumably that’d be Steam-specific and have no actual first party approval process?
